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Violence at a refugee processing centerin Greece and talk of desperate measures in Italy demonstrated this week thescale of the impact the migrant crisis has wrought on European nations at keypoints of entry.

On Tuesday, police on the Greek island of Lesbos had to quell an uprising by African migrants within the Moria Migration Reception and Identification Centre, reported state broadcaster Athens-Macedonian News Agency (AMNA).

Police officers and two entire platoons of riot police were brought in from Athens to put down the revolt, according to the stunning report.

The migrants burned an acre of olive groves as well as tentsand garbage receptacles, and they destroyed some of thecenter's infrastructure before being subdued. They also damaged five cars, a few of which belonged to police, and injured seven police officers.

Authorities arrested over 30migrantsof African origin for starting the violence; they will be taken to a processing center for deportation, according to the AMNA report.

The incident in Greece came less than a week after Italy, another point of entry for many cross-Mediterranean migrants, threatened to issue 200,000 visas to African migrants and send them north into the rest of Europe.

"Letting migrants travel once they reach Italy would create a real problem for our EU neighbors. But I hope it would force France to confront the migrant problem head-on," said Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Giro said in an interview with U.K. newspaper The Times.

So dire is the situation that at the beginning of July, Italian officials threatened to seize migrant rescue ships operated by NGOs and shut down their ports entirely after 13,500 African migrants arrived on the country's shores in a span of just two days at the end of June.

In response to the massive June influx into Italy, neighboring Austria sent 750 soldiers and four tanks to the Italian border.

"The preparations at our border with Italy are not only justified but necessary. We are prepared, and if necessary we will defend our borders," said Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz at the time, following a complaint from the Italian government.

This month the United Nations Migration Agency figures released earlier this month revealed that nearly 100,000 people crossed the Mediterranean during the first half of 2017 alone.

But despite the ever-worsening situation, the EUhas done very little to solve it. After weeks of desperate lobbying from the Italian government, on Tuesday the EUfinally restricted sales of rubber boats to Libya.

"EU member states will now have a legal basis to prevent the export or supply of these goods to Libya where there are reasonable grounds to believe that they will be used by people smugglers and human traffickers," EU officialssaid in a statement.

Read more here:
European Nations at Points of Entry Grow Desperate as Migrant Crisis Rages - LifeZette